![]() ![]() But corsets were associated with upper class status because upper class wore them first. ![]() I mean, male doctors more or less would say don’t wear corsets, they are unhealthy, they’re bad for you, and they’re bad for your unborn child. Women had a number of reasons why they choose to wear corsets often in the face of mail opposition. But if you look at the history more carefully, and it did last 400 years, you see how it’s more complicated than that. ![]() I think most people look at it as being something which was deeply oppressive to women and that somehow a patriarchal society forced women to wear it. And I was drawn to the corset because I think it’s the single most controversial garment in the entire history of fashion. Was it oppressive to women, or was it liberating? And it was like a light bulb went on and I realized fashion is part of culture. And one of my classmates gave a presentation about two scholarly articles in a feminist journal arguing about the meaning of the Victorian corset. Valerie Steele: The corset – what made me go into fashion history actually, I had gone to Yale to do Modern European Cultural and Intellectual History. ![]()
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